Still Midnight

25

They were dawdling. Bannerman and Morrow strolled from the car park around the station house and along the road as if they had all the time in the world, as if every moment was not a timeframe during which an old man who had worked blamelessly every waking moment of the last thirty years could be killed.

If they had thought about it neither of them would have been quite sure why they lingered in one another’s company. They didn’t like each other, had fuck all in common, but they had achieved a sort of truce over the day. They were reluctant to lose that in the company of others.

Bannerman spotted the mini supermarket down the road. ‘I need a paper…’ he said.

‘No.’ Morrow pushed him towards the yard door. ‘Come on…’

Miserably he punched the security code into the numbered pad. The door buzzed and they both stared at it until Morrow sighed and pushed it open. ‘Fucking get in.’

The processing bar was busy with a couple of easy collars having a laugh with the guys on the desk. Morrow and Bannerman kept their heads down and went through to the duty seargeant’s desk. The copper she’d been unkind to about the graffitti scowled when he saw her. For a moment she thought about apologising but decided it would be easier to scowl back.

She typed the code into the CID corridor and they sloped inside, both eyeing MacKechnie’s office. The lights were on but the door shut, as if he was on a phone call or picking his nose. They stepped up the corridor and Morrow tried to peel off and go to their office but Bannerman pinched her sleeve and made her come with him.

MacKechnie called them to come. Bannerman opened the door wide into the corridor and tried to get Morrow to go in first but she held firm. MacKechnie looked up expectantly at Bannerman.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘Omar Anwar wasn’t in…’

MacKechnie looked up from his paperwork and saw the look on his face. ‘What is it? Do you want me to guess?’

Bannerman slumped. ‘Omar is Bob. He’s got a business doing import/export to the EU.’

MacKechnie stiffened. ‘Bugger. Carousel VAT fraud? Is that what you’re saying?’

Bannerman shrugged. ‘That would be my supposition… We’ve taken his paperwork and his computer hard drive… They’re being processed now.’

‘Right… right. Do we have to call Fraud right now? Would you say it was that pressing?’ MacKechnie could see the danger of it; the public perception of a department prosecuting a victim of violent crime, the endless paper trails and his officers spending weeks milling in High Court corridors, waiting to be called to give evidence.

‘Well… we could see what’s on the hard drive first. It’s just a suspicion, we haven’t really got any evidence…’

‘OK,’ he said vaguely. ‘Lab reports are in, Morrow, go and check them out.’

Bannerman turned to her as she left, pleading for her to come back and save him. She grinned and slapped his back. She was glad to get outside the room and shut the door firmly behind her.

In her office someone had carefully stacked hard copies of lab reports, of the fingerprint evidence which had already been gone over with no anomalies found, over the lab reports on the van which turned up squat. She read them again. The tinfoil had opiate residue in it, cut solely with milk powder, no laxatives, no talc, just pure milk. It was unusual. She puzzled over it as she put the Anwars’ answerphone tape into a tape recorder. She made a copy and played it.

Billal answered, they asked for Bob and he handed it over to his brother. The kidnapper asked after Aleesha’s injuries and agreed to phone back at five to make an arrangement for a pick-up. He ended by saying he knew about Omar. She noted the interest in Aleesha, wondering if he knew her or was worried about the charges against him.

She took it into the incident room for transcription. DC Routher was prematurely balding and long overdue a promotion. He was good at paperwork though, efficient, and no one who got him ever wanted to let him go. She gave him the tape. ‘Anyone got a picture of the M8 motor?’

‘Aye.’ He pointed her over to a board of images and notes that MacKechnie had been adding to. In the centre was a big photo of a car. It was grainy, taken from CCTV cameras, enlarged and printed onto copy paper.

Because the cameras were up high on the motorway lights the driver’s face was obscured by the car roof. In the second picture the car was fuller, they could see a front passenger’s thighs and a hand on a knee. A final picture of the car driving back towards the town showed that the chassis was sitting low.

She went back over to Routher. ‘Where did it come off?’

‘Town centre, Charing Cross.’

‘Fuck.’ Charing Cross had seven exits and three broken cameras. The car could have gone anywhere. ‘Lost it?’

‘’Fraid so. The reg is out now anyway. Everyone in the city’s looking for it. If they’re not picked up in the next half hour they must be sitting in a garage somewhere.’

‘Did Bannerman drop in a bag of CCTV tapes from a shop?’

Routher pointed to a small office room across the corridor. She could see Harris in profile through the strip of glass on the door, sitting on a chair, arms crossed, watching the far wall intently. He didn’t look happy.

She walked across the corridor and opened the door. ‘Right?’

Harris didn’t look up. ‘It’s because I said about the DVD, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know why Bannerman loves you enough to give you this, Harris, he just does.’

‘Ma’am, it’s days and days’ worth.’

‘You don’t have to watch it in real time, you can speed it up.’

She looked at the image on the telly. A small man sitting on a stool behind the counter in Aamir’s shop. She’d seen the publicity photo they were releasing to the news, a family snap shot of him three quarters side on, but this man looked smaller, angrier, less sympathetic.

Harris pressed fast forward on the remote and, suddenly, the wee man was wriggling this way and that, getting down, messing with the shelves behind him, sitting back up. Someone came in and bought fags. A figure came in around the counter, got up on the stool next to him, got down, disappeared, came back with two mugs. She squinted and saw that it was Lander. It was a bad quality tape, a crap angle too.

‘My eyes’ll be bleeding in a minute,’ said Harris.

‘Harris, you’re the only man we trust this with,’ she said sarcastically, backing out of the room.

Bannerman shuffled miserably across her path.

‘Is everything turning to shit in front of ye?’

He didn’t answer but smirked at his shoes.

She filled him in on the kidnapper’s call and then, ‘Listen to this: the residue in the tinfoil wrap from the van? This heroin has been cut with milk powder, but only with milk powder. No talc, no ash, nothing extra. Just milk powder. It’s very clean.’

‘So?’

‘Well, if they were only cutting it with a single substance the quantities needed would attract attention. Usually it’s lots of different things.’

‘Is he a cutter then?’

She shrugged. ‘Unlikely because those guys are very undercover, paid for discretion, and they lose their job if they use. More likely he’s got a long habit and gets a custom deal from someone-’

‘I said that. Long term habit, I said that before…’ He seemed desperate to have got something right so she let him have it.

‘Maybe he lives with a dealer? Has a supply or gets it wholesale. Either way he’s well in with dealers.’

‘Cuts it himself?’

‘For himself.’

He looked hopeful. ‘Could this be traceable then?’

Morrow shrugged. ‘Worth a try.’

At half past one Eddy and Pat were still cruising in the car, listening to the radio. Pat turned it up so loud that Eddy couldn’t talk over it. A high-pitched alert signalled from Eddy’s pocket and he pulled over to the side to read it.

Pat could see the text. It was from Eddy’s ex-missus in Manchester. Their youngest daughter was six today. Phone or she’d cut his balls off.

Eddy’s colour changed as he read it and Pat knew if he didn’t get out of the car he’d get the brunt of it.

‘I’ll jump out here,’ he said, throwing the door open to the street.

‘She’s fuckin’-’ Eddy leaned over the seat. ‘Pat, get back in.’

‘No, no.’ Pat backed away from the car, holding the edge of the door. ‘Give ye privacy to call. Pick me up in half an hour.’ And he slammed the door shut, instantly regretting that he’d left the paper with her picture inside. He looked in at Eddy. A nothing in Reactalite glasses. Small, fat, furious.

Eddy pointed straight down to the ground and mouthed angrily, ‘Here?’

‘In half an hour.’ Pat turned away so that Eddy couldn’t argue, walking quickly away down the road. He kept moving at the same pace until he saw the silver car draw past him, down the road and disappear around a corner.

Pat breathed out and looked up, actually excited at the prospect of a half-hour holiday from Eddy. When he saw where he was he almost choked. He was just around the corner from the Vicky. She was just around the corner.

He hurried up, breaking into a jog until he reached the junction and stopped. A low row of newsagents and chip shops on his right but to his left, across the road, loomed the Vicky Infirmary. He struggled to breathe in. He searched his conscience to see if it was true, if he really hadn’t known where he was. He hadn’t: it was as if it was meant.

Outside smokers were huddled in their coats, standing singly or in twos, gazing aimlessly out into the street. Pat stood with his toes over the edge of the pavement, straining, face first towards the passing traffic. He wanted to be there, just a little closer.

Suddenly aware that he might be acting strangely and attract attention, he veered right and went into a newsagent’s shop. He bought the paper again, smiling to himself as he picked a can of juice out of a fridge, and found himself asking for ten Marlboro reds, imagining that it was what she might smoke, if she smoked.

The man behind the counter tried to chat, asking if he had finished his work for the day, but Pat couldn’t hear him. He nodded and paid and left the shop, hurried off across the road, dodging buses and cars, snaking between parked cars. He was grinning as he walked over to the Infirmary and took his place among the line-up under the smokers’ shelter.

An old man in a green bunnet and tweed coat was standing next to him, watching Pat as he took out his packet of ten from his pocket and unwrapped the clear cellophane.

‘You just starting again?’ The old man’s voice was low and rough, his nose a blistered mess of skin, but he stood upright.

‘No.’ Pat looked down at his packet and pulled out the silver foil, crumpling it into his palm and pulling a cigarette out. ‘Just… sometimes. When I’m stressed. Have ye a light, faither?’

The old man reached into his pocket and brought out a dun tin lighter, flicked the wheel and held the flame to the tip.

Pat puffed, superficially, not really inhaling but getting a wild buzz off it none the less. He felt dizzy and reached back to steady himself against the building, smiling when the stone hit his palm. She was in there, on the other side of this wall, and he was touching it.

‘Well, son, ye look pretty happy for someone under stress. Are ye visiting?’

‘Aye, but she’s getting out.’

‘Oh, lucky, aye.’ The man looked away. ‘You’re lucky.’

He wanted to be asked about the person he was visiting, a wife or a son maybe, but Pat didn’t want to talk. He opened his paper and pretended to read the front page, leaning his back on the wall, feeling cold from the smooth stone chill at his back. He forgot to smoke his cigarette. He let it burn out in his fingers as he looked at the picture and thought of her upstairs and him down here, just about to visit her with yet more flowers, with women’s magazines and sweeties.

And she would sit up in the bed when she saw him walking towards her, and her face would open towards him and her hands would slide from the blanket over her knees to her sides, and he would walk, faster and faster, until he was inches from her face and he would hold her face in his big warm hands and he would kiss her.

It was counter-intuitive to trust Kevin Niven. He had greasy hair, wore trackies, had the bad skin and vague speech patterns of a junkie. In fact he was a decorated officer with years of undercover experience. He sat alone in the canteen though, nibbling a poor homemade sandwich, looking shifty and attracting sidelong looks from the officers who didn’t know him.

Morrow could imagine how uncomfortable he made them, like someone dressed in a Nazi uniform hanging about a synagogue: you might know he was dressed like that for some higher purpose but in absent-minded moments you’d still feel the urge to punch him.

‘That’s, like, no easy, like, to say…’ He trailed off, head jerking to the side. ‘Know?’

One question in, he already had Bannerman’s hackles up. ‘Where could we find out?’

‘Dunno…’ He seemed to suddenly absorb the information. ‘That’s not that usual, though, eh?’

‘What isn’t?’

‘Someone with a supply or bulk-buying and moderating it, know? Using like a medicine.’

‘What would normally happen if someone had a supply?’

He opened his arms wide and grinned. ‘Gorge.’

Morrow laughed but Bannerman was staring at him intently. ‘Can you think of another reason for this then, this chemical profile of the residue?’

Niven looked at the lab report, considered it, tipped his head one way at one possibility, the other way at another. ‘Here.’ He drew a meaningless mind map on the table, tapping with four fingers to the left. ‘New supply from someone with a lot of milk powder.’ His hand traced a long line. ‘Pattern emerges later.’

Morrow smiled, getting it, but Bannerman looked angrily at the table.

‘Here…’ Kevin tapped another portion of the table. ‘One off, bad mixing, milk powder clustered in one part of a mix.’

‘Hm.’ Morrow was disappointed. ‘So it could mean nothing?’

‘Or,’ Kevin opened his eyes wide, ‘holiday supply, bought elsewhere, used here.’

Morrow nodded. ‘In short, fuck all use then?’

‘Aye.’

‘Means nothing?’

‘Nah, s’not evidence. Well, he mibbi knows someone, early stages. When ye find him he’ll mibbi be someone’s pal.’

‘Part of a crew?’

‘Nah. Unreliable.’

‘So we can only use the connection for confirmation?’

‘Yeah.’

Bannerman looked sadly at the table.

Kevin sucked his teeth noisily. ‘Check for prints, but?’

‘On the foil?’ Bannerman looked up. ‘Don’t know.’

‘’Cause, know how ye go straight to one bit of the lab for residue, eh? Don’t want to dust for prints in case they mess that up, understandable but see they check inside for prints, eh?’

‘Right?’

‘Oh aye,’ said Kevin, looking at his empty hands, turning an invisible bit of foil around and around. ‘’Cause if there’s prints they’ll be good ones, man.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘They’ll be fuck-off good y’uns.’